Thursday, December 22, 2011

Brown powder

There is always the patient you dread seeing. When I see this particular patient in the waiting room an uneasiness wells up from my gut. Don't misunderstand. She is a lovely person. Maybe it would be easier if she wasn't so nice. It is her disease I take issue with. Progress has been excruciatingly slow with regression the rule. After two years treating her I am frustrated. She knows I can help people. Her son and mother responded beautifully.

She was a park ranger. Now she is disabled, unable to work: Fatigue with a capital F, pain and scrambled brain. She experiences confusion and disorientation at times. She suffers with numerous areas of neurocognitive dysfunction. She has been troubled by severe mood swings with sudden uncontrollable tears.

She has been treated aggressively for co-infections and with intravenous antibiotics.

Finally I insisted again that we go down a different path(having suggested this many times in the past). I referred her to a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine. She was skeptical given a background in science. Spiritual healing, cupping and acupuncture she felt were of little or no help. But herbs. Herbs were a different story. She was provided with strange bottles containing brown powder and hand written labels. The labels made various claims: anti-Lyme, anti-Bartonella, detoxifying, anti-inflammatory, anti-biofilm and others. Neither she nor I have a clue what is in these foul tasting mixtures to be taken several times daily with water. But they Work. The combination of herbs and antibiotics has been particularly effective.

Unfortunately she regresses if she stops either the herbs or the antibiotics. Herbs, like antibiotics may be required as maintenance therapy.

4 comments:

Whilst studying my German room mate got quite ill with a regular flu. She got 3 small seeds from the Chinese doctor student living down the hall. This German girl was the most soft spoken, shy and lovely girl you'd ever meet. When I came home that night she came jumping down the corridor shouting hello. My baffled "what happened to you" inquiry was answered in an excessively cheerful tone of voice "I got 3 seeds from the Chinese doctor". I indeed wonder to this day what was in those seeds! She recovered fine, and I asked no questions. Perhaps a wise choice.

I have read all your posts, and appreciate them enormously. Lately I feel that the posts indicate a bit of frustration and perhaps even some exhaustion. I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Hope you get some good rest and come back refreshed ready to help those in need. As much as we want to, nobody can help everyone. I feel a similar despair when it comes to helping ill relatives. Their cognitive dysfunction makes it impossible to help without exhausting yourself.

This sounds like a very similar case to mine. Over the last few months I have been taking a combination of essential oils to drink(yes, similar to the bath massage ones), and also drinking oils of herbs. I have also been on antibiotics. I am definitely starting to see signs of improvement with fatigue.

My doctor is Parisian and based there. This oils drinking is used quite a bit over there. They even have pharmacies that make it up.

The oils have really helped my yeast problems. They are also anti-virals as well as bacterial.

Happy new year! Your blog is wonderful, thank you for the informative posts.

LLMD's have a very difficult job and I have the utmost gratitude and respect for them. It must be very frustrating when patients don't get well. I got an uneasiness in my gut reading this post because I am on the patient end of this scenario. I have left many appointments questioning why I stay with my llmd when I haven't reached balanced health yet. But months turn into years quickly when you think "why switch now, in a few more months I should be good to go". Its beginning to settle in that Lyme disease doesn't always work this way. I am in it for the long haul. I hope my llmd is too!